


Something Missing

by blanketed_in_stars



Series: 52 Weeks of Wolfstar [31]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1995, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Lie Low At Lupin's, M/M, Post-Sirius Black in Azkaban, Second War with Voldemort, Sirius Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 17:19:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4530510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The house is going to eat him, if the tea kettle doesn't kill him first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Missing

**Author's Note:**

> Week 31

Sirius opens his eyes to a ceiling—a ceiling, not stars, and made of plaster, not stone. It’s approximately the fifteenth morning that he’s woken up to this ceiling, and he still feels a jolt of disbelief each time.

It’s strange, how much he remembers, and how much he has just barely forgotten. The two twine in his head until he wishes he hadn’t woken up. He stares blankly heavenward. Was there always a crack in the ceiling, or did it form sometime after he left? Maybe it’s been there as long as he’s lived here, or maybe it carved itself out a second before he opened his eyes. Maybe he can only half recall it because fourteen years ago it was three inches to the left, and it’s shifted since with the breathing of the house, in and out, in and out, and being slowly swallowed alive into the plaster.

He forces himself out of bed. The other side is already cold anyway.

In the kitchen the blue tea kettle is screaming. Sirius stares at it and remembers with absolute clarity the sound of chains and waves on rocks. The whistle pins him in the doorway, digs his feet into the creaky wooden floor, steals the breath from his lungs.

 _”Defervesco,”_ Remus says, and his voice is soft. His hands are soft, too, on Sirius’s shoulders, on his back, guiding him to a chair. They are firm when he sets a cup of tea before him.

Sirius holds the mug with both hands while it steeps. The metal is hot—probably too hot—but Azkaban was cold and all that matters right now is being somewhere else. He lets the heat color his skin, the steam rising up to his face. But it’s only on the surface. Somewhere inside himself he’s still shivering on a hard cot in the dark.

“I thought I’d contact Dumbledore today,” Remus says. He’s quiet, careful. Sirius knows he’s only speaking because he can’t bear the silence. “We’ll have to figure out what to do next once the Order’s all together.”

“Good idea,” Sirius replies. It’s automatic. “Will you floo him, send an owl, what?”

“Owl, I think.”

“All right.” He supposes he should say something more, but he’s stuck. He can hardly breathe without snagging on some fact, tripping over a stray thought. This time it’s the realization—they’re at war again. He doesn’t like thinking about that in this kitchen where he’s spent so many sleepless nights.

“Maybe talking about it would help,” Remus says.

Sirius thinks he sounds doubtful. “If I talk about it, I have to think about it.” But that’s not true, he reflects. Azkaban consumes his thoughts almost every second, whether he speaks or not.

Remus is frowning as if he knows, and he probably does. “It might be best to just get it out.”

“That won’t make it go away,” Sirius snaps. At least, he means to snap. It comes out soft and tired and see-through, like a shirt thin with too many washings. He glares at the tea kettle, still sitting on the stove; that’s what started this. He hates that blue paint, especially the way it’s flaking off with age.

He knows he should say something. Apologize for being harsh. Even if he only offered to talk later, he thinks Remus would be happier, or something. But he can’t get the right words.

After several minutes of unyielding silence, Remus stands up and announces that he’s going to the post office. He pours his tea into the sink as he leaves the room. A few more minutes, and Sirius hears the front door latch shut.

The house, always cold, feels colder. “Bollocks,” Sirius mutters, and the weight of a barred window settles onto his shoulders, fastens its claws into his skin.

“Bollocks,” Sirius says again. He doesn’t like how he can hear himself so precisely, how completely empty this house is. That’s two empty houses in one, he thinks, what with the way his head is these days, and laughs. The sound of that is frightening enough to get him to his feet.

Warm liquid sloshes over his fingers and he remembers the tea. He takes a sip and struggles to swallow—bitter and dark. He pours it down the drain. For interminable seconds after the liquid disappears, he looks out the kitchen window at Buckbeak, happily disemboweling a ferret underneath the Plangentine tree.

The silence is too much. He wonders where Remus keeps the record player now—it’s no longer in the sitting room like it used to be, or in the bedroom, where they sometimes would play it softly while going to bed. Sirius can’t remember the names of those Muggle bands anymore.

But surely, he thinks, Remus wouldn’t have thrown it away? And if he’s kept that, then he must still have his records. Stumbling slightly in his haste, he climbs the steps to the attic.

Immediately, he trips over something in the dust, and curses loudly and with fluency. It doesn’t help the feeling of isolation, but his toes feel better. He bends and picks up the offending object. It turns out to be an old mirror, spotted, covered in cobwebs, and slightly cracked. He recognizes it at once and brushes away most of the dust eagerly—but when he looks into the glass, there is only the image of the side of a cardboard box.

Sirius feels the irrational, idiotic hope die in his throat. If he lets his eyes go out of focus he can almost believe that he’s only waiting for James, but it’s nothing more than a dream. The other mirror must be somewhere in the attic, though, judging by the appearance of the box in the glass. He looks around at all the crates and bins piled waist-high and sighs.

There appears to be no order whatsoever to the attic. The first box Sirius opens is charmed against moths and full of thick cloaks and winter sweaters. The next holds school books from their fourth, fifth, and sixth years, and a few high-scoring Transfiguration essays. Beneath that is a box packed full of Christmas ornaments, which look very much forgotten.

A quarter hour later, Sirius still hasn’t found the record player, but he isn’t looking for that anymore. He sets it aside and comes face-to-face with a large leather-bound book. His fingers tingle as they brush the cover, and suddenly he knows what he will find inside—but he opens it anyway, ignoring the familiarity of the embossed pattern on the spine.

It’s not a mirror. It’s worse. _Peter and James, 1973_ is scrawled on the first page, but there’s no picture. The next few pages are just as blank. The first photograph is listed as _Prefects’ Party, 1975_ and is taken in very bad lighting. Still, Sirius recognizes Lily brushing her hair from her eyes and yanking Remus’s tie—a much younger Remus, with no gray hair or wrinkles, who grins at her and fidgets with the collar of his shirt. He seems to be blushing. As Sirius watches, they both put their arms around each other’s shoulders and wave at him.

Something cracks in him and he can’t breathe right—is he the one making that awful noise? Without warning, his legs give out, and he slides down the wall to sit in the dust and dead insects. The cloud that rises coats his face where it’s wet.

In Sirius’s head, the apartment is empty, the house is half obliterated, and a baby is crying. He stares frantically around the attic for the traitor before coming to his senses. Then he realizes what he’s looking at: the second mirror, wedged between the wall and a large wooden crate. He puts it with its partner, although it hardly seems to matter now, with the smell of October heavy in his nostrils.

That’s where Remus finds him. It could be years later for all that Sirius is aware of the time passing—in Azkaban he had a reason, a purpose, and clung to that to make sense of things. Now what’s the point of keeping track? His knees are stiff and his head pounds. Knowing what day it is won’t make a difference.

“Let’s go,” Remus whispers—he knows, always, what’s needed—and takes his hand.

Sirius inhales and coughs. “I wanted to find your records,” he croaks.

Remus blinks. “I gave them to your cousin Andromeda. About half a year after… everything.”

“Andromeda?”

Remus nods. “Let’s talk downstairs,” he says. He looks uncertain, and very old, and Sirius wants to die and kiss him in the same heartbeat.

“Downstairs,” Sirius repeats, capable of only simple speech, and leans on Remus to get to his feet. They totter down the stairs in a peculiar three-legged fashion and into the sitting room. Sirius collapses on the sofa, closing his eyes.

“Andromeda came to see me,” Remus says into the silence. “It was my birthday. We had a cup of tea and she told me to move on with my life.”

Sirius doesn’t open his eyes, but he frowns. “That was rude of her.” It doesn’t sound like the Andromeda he grew up with.

Remus chuckles softly. “No, she was very kind. And she was right. I’d barely left the house, you know, and everywhere I looked there were reminders of how things had been.” He clears his throat. “If she hadn’t come along I probably would have wasted away in here. She reminded me a bit of you, as a matter of fact. Still does.”

“Of me?” Sirius doesn’t feel very motivating. If anything, he feels about to waste away himself.

“Of course,” Remus replies, as if it’s obvious. “You would’ve done the same. And you’d have been just as straightforward about it. There’s no messing about when it comes to the House of Black, I’ve learned.”

Sirius opens his eyes when he feels fingers combing through his hair. Remus is watching him with a gentle smile, just as he used to beneath the beech tree at Hogwarts, although at those times he was usually smiling into a book. The memory, sweet and faded in contrast to all of his nightmares, hurts.

“Talk to me,” Remus urges.

It’s not the first time Sirius has heard him say that. The last time before today was years and years ago, one of the final times they spoke before Peter betrayed them all. In the time since, Sirius has wondered at least once a day about what would have happened if he’d only answered. Would they have still spent all those full moons apart? Or would the truth have been told before it ever needed to be discovered?

“I just,” Sirius begins, and waits for his eyes to dry out. “I wish it was like before,” he says at last. “That we could get the time back somehow. That we weren’t alone, and you didn’t have gray hair, and my head would stop coming unglued.”

Remus presses a kiss to his temple, so lightly that it tickles. “I can’t make it like before,” he says, sounding sorry, “and I can’t turn back time. I can’t fix my hair.” He kisses Sirius’s other temple. “I can’t fix your head, either. I wish I could, more than anything.”

Sirius looks away. Remus waits until he looks back again.

“I can do one thing,” he says. “I can make sure we’re not alone anymore.”

“You can’t make sure,” Sirius sighs, shaking his head. “No one can do that.”

“Maybe not,” Remus allows. “But we’re both here now, aren’t we? And I don’t plan on leaving.”

“Me neither.” Sirius smiles, and it feels false, but also good. And maybe next time the tea kettle won’t sound like Lily screaming—or maybe it will, but Remus will remind him that it isn’t really. And maybe they will all be okay in the end.


End file.
